clown with a hand grenade

On July 01, 2025, President Donald J. Trump visited the new detention facility on an abandoned airstrip in the Florida Everglades that's designed to hold 5,000 undocumented immigrants at a cost $450 million a year (which will be reimbursed by the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA!). 

Trump told reporters there: “Biden wanted me in here…. It didn’t work out that way, but he wanted me in here, that son of a bitch.”

Actually, Mr. President (and I think Joe Biden would agree), we wanted you on television, where you could grow old and saggy playing the fool while doing no great harm. Instead, there's a clown with a hand grenade at the Sunday School picnic attended by masked elves in stab vests and baseball caps.

It's a feckin' nightmare ... they just took that kid's wheelchair ... they removed the guest of honor for public decency and obstructing the performance of political theater ... Look at that! That elf is wearing a badge that says WE DON'T NEED NO STINKIN' BADGES ... (Wait: I've seen this film before!) 

The Florida attorney general who came up with the immigrants in cages in tents plan, gave it the oh-so-clever name “Alligator Alcatraz.” ... They believe their cages in tents will be inescapable ... I believe they haven't read Carl Hiaasen.

Someone cleverer than Florida's attorney general said "Alligator Alcatraz" is the wrong reference because prisoners at Alcatraz got due process ... they're calling it  "Alligator Auschwitz." 

The political historian Heather Cox Richardson reminds us July 01, 2025 is exactly a year since a split decision at the Supreme Court overthrew what she called "the central premise of American democracy: that no one is about the law." And what are we supposed to do about that?

I know what *I'm* doing. 

I'm 72-and-51/52-seconds old, but they played a long game to lull us into this nightmare, and now I'm playing one back ... the old guy who plants and waters a tree as if I'll live to sit in its shade. And maybe I will ... maybe it's one of those trees that grows really fast ... or maybe I'm one of those folks whose consolation is getting to shuffle off the stage really slow.

Doesn't matter. If I need to hand off the watering can, there will be someone ready to take the handoff. I know this because I have friends everywhere, if you know what I mean.

Sources

https://heathercoxrichardson.substack.com/p/july-1-2025

https://newsroom.ap.org/editorial-photos-videos/detail?itemid=86faa2e803d74589b3de055232af183c

https://talkingpointsmemo.com/where-things-stand/lots-of-insane-ideas-flying-around-at-alligator-alcatraz

https://www.cbsnews.com/miami/news/florida-attorney-general-proposes-alligator-alcatraz-as-immigration-detention-site-in-everglades/